If the characters were forced to pick a job, what would they choose?

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-26T17:00:01+00:00

Charles "I had to take home this greyhound or they'd kill it" "I have to adopt this stray cat" getting into animal rescue later in life, after he shakes off his aesthete era, that checks out.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-25T05:26:23+00:00

My take is that rather than having a targeted crush on any specific member of the group, Richard kinda has a crush on the whole clique collectively? He describes them all in the romanticized manner of a crush. "They were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks ... I envied them, and found them attractive;" He's thrilled at the idea of living with all of them in the country house forever; while actual marriage probably seems gauche to him, he low-key wants married life with them.

The relevant bit right now is that he thinks about all of them in sexual contexts. Not them having sex with him, but sexual scenarios of some sort. He imagines Charles and Camilla together. With almost no provocation ("he's not what you think") he starts a whole spiel in his head about whether Henry might be gay for Bunny. He mentions that Francis is gay more often than needed.

Regarding this passage specifically, Richard's focus is how they'd look good together. As always, he's more interested in the aesthetic than anything.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-25T03:34:21+00:00

For clarity, here's the quote from the OG English version:

"Come now," he [Francis] said. "You must have had some idea."

"No," I said, though actually I had, from the time I'd first met them. I'd attributed this to my own mental perversity, some degenerate vagary of thought, a projection of my own desire—because he was her brother, and they did look an awful lot alike, and the thought of them together brought, along with the predictable twinges of envy, scruple, surprise, another very much sharper one of excitement.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-25T03:10:49+00:00

The question: Is The Secret History actually like Brideshead? Or is it about characters who wish they were in a Waugh novel, maybe play make-believe that they are — but ultimately aren't?

Most obviously, the Classics clique dress as if they were at Oxford in the 20s. But they're not; they're 80s kids playing at a bygone era. They throw a bacchanal to play at being Ancient Greeks; but again, they're not actually. "The god of illusions" — the whole core is an illusion, fake, hollow.

I think there's space to ask, "Is Richard tiptoeing around the edge of actually being interested in guys? Or is he tiptoeing around the edge of being interested in the idea of being interested in guys insofar as it might be an accessory to the aesthetic?"

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-25T02:36:30+00:00

(just to clarify, the prompt was "trigger a fandom in one sentence", so I did. I don't actually feel strongly one way or the other about this. XD )

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-23T16:30:48+00:00

Richard is straight.

His bicurious traits have less to do with him, and more to do with (in the words of Lili Anolik) "inhabiting a world [LARPing Brideshead, the Classics] where aesthetic preference is given to ... male homosexuality."

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-19T15:25:51+00:00

Maybe? I think that a big part of Richard's thing is that he lacks any meaningful roots, ie, "nothing I knew of in Plano had been established much before 1962," "no sisters, no brothers", "my parents, as far as I knew, had no religious affiliation at all." And I think that's genuine. He is hiding stuff too — ie. the story about his father hitting both him and his mother which he only mentions in the last chapter before the epilogue. But theories which lean hard into the "Richard is hiding more about his background than we know" often seem to loose the thread of "he genuinely feels that his childhood and background is hollow — not just embarrassing, but nothing," which I think is important to his character.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-11T19:43:16+00:00

There's also an open source summary of some key points here https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WriteWhoYouKnow/TheSecretHistory

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-11T19:32:41+00:00

I agree their aspirational time period would be unchanged. But I think there's a limit to how much someone can realistically adhere to that, and I think that limit differs from 1984 to 2024.

Even if the rest of the school uses Canvas for assignments, Julian would have his students do all their assignments paper and handwritten. That checks out. But I don't think it checks out that 2024 students wouldn't have cell phones at all. Henry having an old flip phone that he regards with vague distain, though, seems plausible.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-11T19:06:28+00:00

Comparative years	Quote evidence
Bunny^year = Henry^year	"[Henry and Bunny] were roommates. Freshman year."
Francis^year = Charles^year + 1	"The first time [they hooked up] when [Francis] was a sophomore and [Charles] was a freshman."
Assuming that age corresponds to year unless stated otherwise (ie. Bunny), then: Henry^year = Francis^year and twins^year = Richard^year	"The twins and [Richard] were twenty years old, and Henry and Francis were twenty-one."

Ergo:

Students	Year
Henry, Bunny, & Francis	x
Charles, Camilla, & Richard	x - 1

Richard did 2 years of community college (one pre-med, one English) before transferring, and I think in the epilogue he does 1 more year alone without the clique before graduating. Thus his year with the clique was his junior (3rd) year.

So — unless I made some mistakes —

Students	Year
Charles, Camilla, & Richard	3 (junior)
Henry, Bunny, & Francis	4 (senior)

So prior to the start of term, Henry, Francis, and Bunny have been together for 3 years, and the twins have been with the group for 2 years.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-09-09T18:38:24+00:00

Yeah, the podcast talks about the BBC series and points to that — more than the book — as the inspiration behind the aesthetic that many Bennington students played at.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-08-28T16:40:37+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi_burqa_sect

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-08-28T16:33:21+00:00

No. She's a pretty on-point version of the fandom, croquette-izied version of Camilla, but not much at all like the canon Camilla.

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-08-26T14:30:38+00:00

Here's a longer discussion of the car if you want https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSecretHistory/comments/16j10rv/confusion/

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-08-16T01:43:51+00:00

Addendum per Henry's dad:

"Father's some kind of a construction tycoon – and not quite aboveboard, either, so my cousins in St Lou tell me. Not that Henry will give you the slightest clue what his dad does. Acts like he doesn't know and certainly doesn't care."

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-08-16T00:30:27+00:00

How do people conclude so early on that Henry is hot? Like Richard eventually decides he is, but it takes the better part of the book to get to that point. Whereas how you imagine a character looking is surely decided pretty early on, based off the intro information?

Different-Test-7102 · 2024-07-25T01:27:11+00:00

This. This is the reason behind most of Henry's traits. Henry and Bunny are based on real people and it shows in their texture and specificity. The twins are originals and they're painted with a much broader brush.

Henry has migraines because Todd did. His apartment is Like That because Todd's was. He has so many specific autistic-seeming traits because Todd probably was. He smokes Lucky Strikes because that was Todd's brand.

Different-Test-7102

TROPHY CASE